


Take a deep breath (And give up)

by SquaresAreNotCircles



Category: Hawaii Five-0 (2010)
Genre: 'now that I know you can hold your breath that long' fic, Bad Flirting, Episode: s09e13 Ke Iho Mai Nei Ko Luna (Those Above are Descending), Getting Together, M/M, Mentions of pancakes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-20
Updated: 2019-01-20
Packaged: 2019-10-13 11:12:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,841
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17487056
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SquaresAreNotCircles/pseuds/SquaresAreNotCircles
Summary: Steve decides to put it all on the whole freediving a hundred and thirty meters thing when he says, in the car home that day, “You know, diving is not the only activity where holding my breath for a long time comes in useful.”Or: Steve is very talented. Danny suffers. (They have their happily ever after, of course.)





	Take a deep breath (And give up)

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, so, I know for a fact that I’m not the only one whose mind went down this particular road after 9.13, because I’ve seen more than one person talk about it on Tumblr. To everyone who was in the same boat (haaa, ironic turn of phrase for this episode) and to everyone who wasn’t but still enjoys reading about Steve and Danny flirting outrageously: this is your fic. I have two (2) different 9.11 fics that I'm still trying to finish at some point this year, but this really, really wanted to be written. 
> 
> The title is a bit of inspirational advice from comedian Bo Burnham.

“Don’t ever, ever, do that to me again, please,” Danny says. 

_Sorry,_ Steve thinks, even though he has no breath to say the words. _I love you._

“Now that I know you can hold your breath that long-” Danny obliviously continues, and oh, now things are getting interesting.

_Yeah?_ Steve doesn’t say. In his slightly adrenaline-high mind, it’s accompanied by an expert eyebrow movement he never makes, because everything is heavy and he needs more oxygen in his body before he can move a muscle, let alone be coordinated about it. The slow rocking of the boat alone would probably be enough to topple him if he tried to get up right now.

“-I don’t wanna hear you complain-”

_That’s your thing,_ Steve’s mind replies wittily. Then it ruins things for itself by following that up with an exceptionally whiny, _Now out with it, please._

“-when I bring take-out into the car,” Danny finishes. “Okay?”

Steve almost misses it because he’s so preoccupied with the voice in his own head, which he’s not even sure is entirely his own anymore. _God, Danny,_ it says, _that’s all, after all those suggestive pauses?_

Steve is inclined to agree.

*

The thing, you see, about having a job where he’s likely to have a near-death experience on any given day – Danny might be figuratively rubbing off on him, if he’s thinking of it in those terms – is that it makes having life-altering epiphanies pretty easy. There’s always a good excuse nearby, after all.

Steve decides to put it all on the whole freediving a hundred and thirty meters thing when he says, in the car home that day, “You know, diving is not the only activity where holding my breath for a long time comes in useful.”

He’s got his breath back, by this point. He appreciates being able to talk far more now that he wasn’t, for a while.

Danny turns towards him in the passenger seat. “Yeah?” he asks. It lingers between them for one of those electric moments that have always been there, but have only gotten worse as the years passed them by. Steve doesn’t even have to take his eyes off the road to know that Danny is studying his face. “What’s another thing?”

That’s when he knows he has Danny, hook, line, and sinker. He grins at him, making it slow and letting the build-up be its own suggestion. “Stuffing my mouth with as many pancakes at once as humanly possible,” he says, letting go of the act and allowing his full, undoubtedly goofy grin to show through.

Danny blinks like he just got thrown for a loop. “You’re an animal,” he says, which is the third time today by Steve’s count. It’s probably a reflexive response because Danny’s brain was going in a different direction and hasn’t fully caught up yet. 

Steve is absurdly proud of himself.

*

Okay, so maybe ‘I’m going to sexually frustrate the hell out of my partner because I really thought he was finally going somewhere different with that thing he said but then he chickened out and I’m tired of dancing around it’ shouldn’t be classified as a life-altering epiphany. It is, though, in a way. It certainly alters Steve’s life.

For example, instead of saying some completely normal thing over lunch the next day, he chooses to go for, “Catherine really liked how long I could hold my breath.”

Danny has just opened his mouth to shovel a forkful of shrimp into it, but now he closes it with a snap. It’s just the two of them at Kamekona’s for once, so they have a table all to themselves. They were in the neighborhood and the rest of the team is taking their break at the Palace. “Catherine?” Danny asks, a note of disbelief in his voice.

Steve shrugs. “We were talking about Rachel just yesterday.”

“ _You_ were talking about Rachel yesterday,” Danny retorts. He actually has a point. For a moment Steve watches him poke at his garlic shrimp, but then Danny’s curiosity still seems to get the better of him. “You were saying, about Cath?”

“She liked how long I could hold my breath,” Steve repeats.

“Why?” It’s not entirely clear if Danny means ‘why did she like it’ or ‘why are you telling me this’. It could go either way, but Steve chooses to accept the first interpretation.

“No idea why.” That’s true, but only because everything before it was a lie. He and Cath had never talked about anyone holding their breath, as far as he remembers. “Never really asked her.”

Danny still has some shrimp on his fork, halfway to his mouth, but seems to have forgotten the presence of food completely. There’s a very conflicted expression on his face. Steve enjoys watching him struggle to decide between letting Steve get away with this, and calling him out on his bullshit and risking an awkward conversation about oral sex if Steve plays dumb.

In the end, Danny crams the shrimp into his mouth and chews on that instead of his obvious dilemma. He looks madder about it than anyone should be while eating prize-winning seafood.

*

“There was this instructor I had at Annapolis,” Steve starts, over beers that night. He likes dropping these out of nowhere, because by now he’s done it just enough times that Danny gets this suspicious look in his eyes when Steve says anything that’s not directly related to a conversation they were already having.

“Yeah? Was he a good teacher?” Danny asks. He kind of has to if he doesn’t want to come across like a bad friend, because Steve is pretty sure Danny knows that he’s doing all of this on purpose, but Danny hasn’t said it in so many words yet. As long as he doesn’t take that step, he’s forced to play along. 

Steve nods, concentrating on keeping a straight face. “He taught me how to suppress my gag reflex. It’s a very useful skill.”

The couch creaks a little when Danny freezes. His hands are folded around his beer bottle in a white-knuckled grip as he glares at Steve. “What does that have to do with holding your breath?”

“Who said anything about holding my breath?” Steve asks, affecting his very best look of innocent surprise. 

“Who said anything about a gag reflex?”

“I did,” Steve points out.

Danny puts his beer bottle down on the coffee table with enough force that it wouldn’t be a surprise if it left a dent. “Okay, I get the breath thing – it saved our team’s lives – but why the fuck would the Navy want you to get rid of your gag reflex?”

“Intelligence gathering,” Steve says. He allows Danny to paint his own picture of what that could mean for another moment before he puts him out of his misery. “If you’re on a mission in hostile territory and there’s vital information on a thumb drive that needs to be kept out of the enemy’s hands, you have to be able to swallow it. It’s no good if you start puking.”

Danny breathes out in a way that sounds almost relieved. “God, the things my tax dollars pay for.”

*

“Did you know that holding my breath-” Steve starts, on the second morning after the underwater murder case. They’re in his kitchen, having a quiet cup of coffee before carpooling to work. He gets no further than those seven words, because Danny throws up his hands and almost spills his coffee.

“Okay, Steve, just stop it.”

Steve’s fake surprised expressions are getting a serious workout these days. “Stop what?”

Danny puts his cup down on the kitchen counter for improved hand-waving. “This,” he says, drawing an angry circle around Steve’s entire being. “You know what I mean. This really weird seduction ploy you’ve got going.”

Steve grins at the thought that he has a ploy. “You think I’m seductive?”

“I think I should put that lung capacity of yours to the test and choke you.”

Steve doesn’t even say anything in response to that. He doesn’t have to. He raises his eyebrows meaningfully.

Danny groans and rubs at his temples like he’s staving off a headache. “Perfect, now I’m playing into it. I walked right into that one. How did I not see that before the words were out of my mouth?”

“Maybe you were distracted,” Steve suggests, as sweetly as he can.

“By you, yes.”

Steve nods thoughtfully and puts his own empty coffee cup next to Danny’s. The cups are very close, but not touching. It’s a metaphor for their lives. “Or by images of things you could make me choke on.”

Danny stares at him. He stares for a good, long while. “You mean my dick, right?”

“Yes, Danny,” Steve says, as solemnly as he can possibly manage. “I mean your dick.”

“Right, okay.” Danny nods a bit, as if to himself. “Just making absolutely sure we’re on the same page before I do something stupid.”

Steve is so, so close to saying ‘I’m stupid, do me’, but he’s afraid Danny might actually choke him, and not in a sexy way. “That sounds like you’re gonna do the stupid thing regardless.”

“Yeah, you know what? Probably.”

Steve is already drifting forward slightly, completely betraying his eagerness, by the time Danny’s hand reaches out to grab at his collar and pull him down.

“Let’s put that breath-holding ability of yours to the test, huh?” Danny says. Steve is sure he had a retort to that, but it goes out the window when Danny kisses him.

*

It’s a Friday and they didn’t have any active cases anyway. Steve doesn’t feel _too_ guilty about abusing his position as head of the Governor’s special taskforce to give himself and his partner an unexpected day off. If anyone asks for paperwork, they can say they’ve been doing some vital teambuilding.

When Steve surfaces from under the sheets, he drapes himself over Danny, who is panting almost as hard as he is. Danny absently pets the arm Steve sneaks across his waist. “What did I even do to deserve all of this?”

“You started it,” Steve says. He notes with satisfaction that his voice is a little rough. 

Danny makes an inquisitive noise.

“That thing you said about knowing how long I can hold my breath now. The _pauses_ when you said that.”

Unexpectedly, Steve feels Danny move. Danny pushes himself up on his elbows so he can look down at Steve. “Wait, what,” he says. There’s not a question mark in sight. “That wasn’t me starting anything. That morning, you said I never butter your pancakes. _You_ started it.”

“Oh.” Steve blinks at him and pats his shoulder until Danny caves and lies back down. Steve snuggles up against him. He’ll consider being embarrassed about that later, but for now he’s just going to enjoy the hell out of it. “That’s fair. I started it.”

“Well,” Danny allows, “you started this round.”

Steve grins against the pillow and Danny’s shoulder, and breathes in deeply.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!! I know I'm woefully behind with responding to comments (again), but they often genuinely do make my day (and I will get to them eventually!). I love reading your thoughts. ❤
> 
> I'm on Tumblr as [itwoodbeprefect](https://itwoodbeprefect.tumblr.com), or with my exclusively H50 (and mostly McDanno) sideblog as [five-wow](https://five-wow.tumblr.com).


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